Ok so its been VERY quiet here, my bad.

In my defence I’ve been quite busy moving house and don’t really have much in the way of internet access (unless ‘borrowed’ wireless internets in one corner and a half-working 3G dongle in another corner count).

But the good news can be summarised as follows:

• The old flat of doom is GONE and sold!! For the asking price!! Which means I have now paid off a scary amount from credit cards - hooray! I have resolved to next time just save up enough money first, before doing building work

• I’ve moved to Brighton, which has amazingly lived up to expectations! Weather is UTTERLY WONDERFUL so far, walking to work is BRILLIANT and the job is also good too - challenging but not impossible, nice people, fantastic nearby pubs and free toast to boot!
• I’ve just exchanged contracts on the flat I’m buying, nice and near-ish the sea, in the lovely quiet-ish (but not too quiet) Hove and with hugely high ceilings. Yum! It’s even in good enough condition that it can be ‘done up’ gradually by proper carpenters / plubmers / etc rather than in a rush by (mostly) rubbish builders, as last time. We move in a week tomorrow!
• as if that wasn’t enough I’m off on holiday (that I can now afford) the week after moving flat. So I have the lovely Italian food and countryside to enjoy with Bobble (who is, of course, still lovely as well).

Hoorah!

I think there’s an old saying that people get the leaders that they deserve - all I can say is that the 1.1-ish million Londoners that voted for the gonk-haired twat of a new mayor certainly deserve him.

Far more worrying, though, is that the BNP now have a seat in the London Assembly. That can’t be simply attributed to people fed up with eight years of ‘red Ken’. Perhaps this represents a more media-savvy BNP, who have realised they need to moderate - at least somewhat - their odious policies of hate in order to appeal to those worried about “losing their jobs to migrants” or “the strain on society” or other such utter bollocks.

It is a very sad day that the most vibrant, multicultural city in the world votes for the BNP. A sad, sad day indeed.

B and I have always said James Purefoy would make a great Avon in any remake of Blakes 7, and now it seems that Sky One are doing a new series. Whoo hooo!

Please, someone get him in there, now!

It has to be said, I do. Always lots of fantastic, really interesting documentaries and generally I feel like I’m learning things when I watch, rather than getting dumber.

Right now I’m mainly loving the current season on BBC Four called “Inside the Medieval Mind“. The trailer for it alone is a brilliant Early Music rendition of a Jimi Hendrix song - you can see the trailer on the BBC website and even download the mp3 of the music!

Info from the beeb:

The music used in the trail is Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix - played on various medieval instruments. Tam Nightingale, musical co-ordinator on the project, said he chose Purple Haze as he thought it to be “the quintessential psychedelic track.”

Earlier in the week I caught Steven Fry and the Gutenberg Press which was of course great, I’ll happily watch anything with Mr Fry in it but this was very interesting stuff. If you rush you can still watch it on the BBC iPlayer (if you’re in the UK that is).

So, now that I’ve (hopefully) sold my old home and bought a shiny new one (fingers crossed on the paperwork all going smoothly) I clearly need a new project to keep me busy!

Well, not really, but I certainly need a solution to the age old question of “where is all the tech going in the new flat”.

My current solution of 19 inch rackmount equiment in a DIY box on wheels is actually rather good, although very ugly and only suitable for hiding in a cupboard - which is what I’ve currently done [I’ll find some pictures later]. However the nice lounge in the new Victorian flat does not have such a handy location that I can box in. Also, I wanted to do something a bit more… interesting. Also quiet, and not the “I will overheat your Xbox 360″ kind of quiet that I currently have… I have open the door to the cupboard to stop the 360 basically melting, and as that is far and away the loudest thing ever it pretty much defeats the whole point. So, some kind of sound proofing AND ventilation is required there.

You can get some great professional silent rack mount boxes from people like Kell Systems. They look and sound great, and for an office I would absolutely buy one, because (a) I would’t be paying for it and (b) it does look like OFFICE furniture, rather than home furniture.

So, my plan is to buy a nice old cabinet or set of drawers, fit rack motunts to it, stuff it with sound dampening boards/foam and then add some quiet fans to it to ensure nothing melts.

I did think finding an appropriate old cabinet would take a while, but fortunately my lovely other half Bobble is an eBay genius and found an excellent one! Even better was that no-one else had spotted it so I snapped it up for a mere ten pounds. Yay! Ok, so its going to cost 70 pounds to transport it back home, but its still a bargain to me.

Take a look - a lovely retro 50s or 60s (not sure when) TV cabinet. Excellent wood panelling and importantly, plenty of space and already has some ventilation holes! Perfect!

So, once I get this baby home I’ll measure up and no doubt make some SketchUp designs of what will go inside… hee hee!

Ok so it seems our accumulated good karma may be paying off… we’ve got a buyer for our flat and have an offer agreed on a lovely flat in Hove, the mortgage company are happy and the solicitor has been given all the info they need. So now we just have to wait for all that Solicitor-ing and local search gubbins to happen.

One change from my previous homebuying experience is that this time we have a chain of people involved - we’ve all heard horror stories about these but hoepfully it will be ok. I’m determined that we won’t be the ones holding anyone up, and I think all the others in the chain are keen to move quickly so let’s keep them fingers crossed!